While the change is driven in part by cost-consciousness, another factor propelling the change is Instagram: Simple designs photograph well.

The trend is complemented by other luxury hotels – such as the $1 billion Burj Al Arab in Dubai – that are still offering expansive rooms and lavish amenities to their wealthy guests.

There’s a new look among some luxury hotels, and it’s a whole lot smaller – and barer – than it used to be.

It’s part of a move towards “lean luxury,” Quartzy’s Rosie Spinks wrote, and while the pared-down room sizes and simplified amenities are cost-conscious decisions, there’s also another factor at play in the change.

“By cutting back on both the size of the rooms … and some of the more costly amenities of a traditional luxury hotel, hospitality companies can offer better locations, a design-led sensibility with higher quality materials, and an altogether elevated experience – for a pretty damn reasonable price,” Spinks reported. “They also tend to look way better on Instagram.”

One such hotel featuring pared-down room aesthetics is Arlo Hotel, a microhotel in SoHo, NYC. Business Insider’s Katie Warren visited the hotel in 2018 and found that the careful design of the 150-square-foot rooms kept them from feeling cramped.

“The rooms were definitely small, but for someone who doesn’t plan to spend much time in their hotel room and isn’t traveling with multiple large pieces of luggage, I think it would be a fun and memorable place to stay,” she wrote. Despite its diminutive room sizes, though, the hotel is still on the expensive side: Room rates start around $330, compared to the NYC average of $216.

The other end of the luxury hotel spectrum

That’s not to say that over-the-top amenities are disappearing from hotels at large. Lean luxury hotels aren’t necessarily replacing the traditional luxury hotel – instead, they’re opening up a new type of aesthetic on the other end of the spectrum.

Some hotels are pivoting towards customized amenities that personalize a guest’s stay, primarily in the form of hotel staff remembering guests’ food, drink, and product preferences, and delivering those upon the guest’s arrival.

Others are still leaning into the traditional vision of luxury and all its over-the-top trappings. In December, Business Insider’s Harrison Jacobs visited the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, a $1 billion hotel that’s been described as the best hotel in the world and “the world’s first seven-star hotel.” Every room in the hotel, he wrote, is a duplex suite that comes with a butler, an extensive mini bar, fresh fruit upon arrival, and a luxe mattress that can cost up to $15,000.

“I’ve stayed at many five-star hotels at this point,” Jacobs wrote. “The Burj is undoubtedly a class above them all.”